Raquela (14 page)

She waited. More minutes ticked by. She continued massaging. The baby slept peacefully in the bassinet. Its ordeal was over. But not Batya's. Raquela looked across the room at Arik.

In a low, calm voice, she asked, “Still time, Doctor?”

Arik nodded. “A little.”

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty minutes.

At last. The placenta was moving!

Raquela drew it out, rushed it to a table at her side and spread the huge sack on a towel. She examined it minutely, inch by inch, making sure no small pieces had broken off and remained inside Batya.

Now Raquela shouted joyfully, “
Mazal tov!
” Congratulations.

This too was hospital practice. To have congratulated her before the afterbirth was out and whole might bring bad luck.

Raquela lifted the baby and now for the first time placed her in Batya's arms.

The baby's eyes opened as though she wanted to see the face of this stranger in whose body she had swum and slept, and taken nourishment and warmth and shelter, and survived.

For Raquela this was the moment of poignancy, watching the mother and child.

Batya, lost in rapture, as if she were trying to fathom the mystery, stroked her baby's cheeks. She counted the fingers on each hand; then she freed the pink feet from the cloth and counted the toes, then back to the face, tracing the tiny nose, the rose-petal mouth.

Finally she whispered, “She is beautiful. Dear God, let Shimon come home alive and see his little daughter.”

Arik walked to Batya; he put his hand on her arm as it encircled her baby.

“You were very good,” he said. Then he looked down the delivery table to Raquela. “To say nothing of how skilled and brilliant your midwife was; you were so good that you can come back next year.”

Arik's approval seemed to cement the circle around the two young women; they would never be strangers again.

Raquela was still working; she washed the remaining blood from the young mothers body and draped her in a clean white sheet.

“You rest here on the table for a while,” she said, “and maybe sleep a little. I'll take your baby downstairs to the nursery. I'll bring her to you as soon as you're in your room.”

She took the baby in her arms. Arik came and ran his hand over the baby's forehead and the satin-soft skull. His gentleness and his genuine pleasure in touching the baby sent tremors through Raquela's skin.

They walked out of the room to the nursery. “I'm proud of you, Raquela. It was a perfect delivery.” He stopped in the hallway, looked at her, and chuckled. “Even to the baptism.”

She held the baby tighter and smiled. “Next time I'll wear a raincoat and boots.”

EIGHT

MAY 8, 1945, 6
P.M.

“T
he evildoers now lie prostrate before us
.”

Winston Churchill's voice on the BBC rose and on the the hushed assemblage. The student nurses and teachers stood at attention in the lounge, breathing, drinking, inhaling Churchill's words: the war in the West was over.

From the House of Commons they heard the opening of “God Save the King.” Proudly they joined in the singing. Then, as the BBC ended the broadcast, they sang their own anthem,
Hatikvah
—“Song of Hope.”

Raquela saw tears rolling down Judith's cheeks. She put her arms around her.

“Maybe you'll hear something now, Judith. Maybe you'll get some word about your family in Czechoslovakia.”

Judith wiped her eyes. “If only—if only they're alive. It's six years since I saw them. And not one word.”

Raquela looked around the lounge. Each woman was alone with her thoughts. For each of them the victory had a special private meaning. She knew which ones were waiting for their husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers, to come home. For her the end of the war meant Carmi. Now, in the mixture of joy and anxiety that filled the room, Carmi's face seemed clearer, closer to her, than it had for months. She saw the jaunty cap. The movie-star smile. How soon would he hold her in his arms?

Mrs. Cantor was calling for attention. “We've just had a phone call. We've all been invited to a victory celebration in Augusta Victoria.”

It seemed fitting to celebrate victory in the castlelike edifice the Germans had built after Kaiser Wilhelm II came here, in 1898, and received Theodor Herzl. Now it was one of the British-army headquarters.

The nurses changed into party dresses and drove across the ridge to Augusta Victoria, whose massive wings and tall tower filled the skyline between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. Its formidable stone walls were lit up with lanterns. Flags and streamers waved in the night winds that came off the desert. In the great halls, army bands played. Raquela and the nurses joined the officers and soldiers. They ate sandwiches and brandy-filled English fruitcake. They waltzed and fox-trotted and jitterbugged. In long lines, shaking their hips and waving their index fingers in the air, they snaked up and down the long halls in the conga. They sang English and Hebrew songs and joked that the old German empress Augusta Victoria must be rolling in her grave. They toasted the king; they toasted the empire. And, silently, Raquela toasted Carmi, who would soon come home.

But Carmi did not come home.

The men of the Jewish Brigade were detained by the British in Europe. It was clear to everyone in Palestine that Whitehall feared that the demobilized soldiers might use their military skill to help Jewish survivors enter Palestine.

Raquela waited impatiently, joining the ranks of the other lonely women. The waiting during the postwar days seemed interminable.

The men of the Jewish Brigade began to travel across Europe in small groups on weekend passes. Carmi described their meetings with the survivors of the concentration camps: “We fling our arms around each other. They look upon us as saviors. Messengers from the Holy Land—the land they dreamed of. The dream that sustained them, helped them stay alive in the death camps. We look upon them as flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood.”

Raquela put Carmi's letter in her apron pocket and descended to the large terrace on the second floor of the nursing school. She sat in a lounging chair, fanning herself. The June day was fiercely hot.

She shut her eyes. When would Carmi come home? Her body turned soft when she thought about him. She could feel his arms holding her close; her mind replayed their all-too-brief evenings together, that first night at the soldiers' club, their walks on Mount Scopus. She could taste his kisses on her lips. Then she remembered his strange jealousy when Shmuel, the young intern, approached them in the university garden. Maybe the war had changed Carmi, matured him.

In February, scarcely seven months away, she would be graduating. What would they do? In his letters he talked of going back to school, of studying agronomy at the Hebrew University School of Agriculture, in Rehovoth. He kept writing, saying he wished they were engaged. What would her life be like if she were married to a farmer? Nursing was her life; delivering babies. Would Carmi—

Her reveries were interrupted; she heard the terrace door opening behind her.

“
Shalom
, Raquela.” It was Judith.

Raquela sat up. “Come join me and cool off.” She motioned to a lounging chair beside her.

Judith walked out on the terrace. “I have only a few minutes. I'm on duty.”

Judith was now a teacher in the nursing school. She had graduated in 1944 and received the coveted Henrietta Szold Award as outstanding student. Mrs. Cantor had recognized her unusual character, her empathy for other students, and prevailed upon her to give up her dream of becoming a midwife and to join the school staff. She was not only teaching now; she was also the assistant housemother.

Each week, when Mrs. Simonson went off duty, Judith was in charge. It was she who checked the beds at midnight with her flashlight. But unlike Mrs. Simonson, she closed her eyes when she saw an empty bed. And when the girls returned from their dates, their eyes often red from tearful good-byes, she comforted them. She herself had fallen in love with an oboe player, Elie Freud. They planned to marry now that the war was over.

A cool wind blew over the terrace.

“How welcome this breeze is,” Judith said. “I think I will join you for a few minutes.

She leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes.

After a while Raquela spoke softly. “I had a letter from Carmi today. I feel so restless—even irritable. I keep worrying about the future. If only I knew when he was coming home.”

“It's good you get letters. At least you know he's alive.”

Raquela saw Judith lower her head.

Slowly, as if she were dredging the words out of a well of pain, Judith said, “If I could only get one letter—one little note from my mother telling me she's alive.”

Raquela wanted to comfort her. But she could find no phrases. How trivial her problems seemed compared to Judith's.

Judith folded her hands on her white uniform. “I still see her, that last day, filling up my suitcase with all those hats and dresses. I see her face every time I sit on the bus. I see it when they bring new patients to the hospital. I see it in my dreams. I wake up screaming, ‘Mama.'”

JULY 26, 1945

Again, elation in Jerusalem. The Labour Party in Britain was swept into office in the July 1945 elections.

For years, as loyal opposition, the Labour Party had denounced the White Paper, deploring the pro-Arab stance of the Conservatives. Even Churchill, who called himself a proud Zionist, had continued the old policy all during the war. Now Churchill and the Conservatives were out. The British people, exhausted from the deprivations and tragedies of the war, weary of the long separations from their families, wanted a change, a clean sweep, new faces, more democratic goals.

In Palestine, the news seemed to herald the long awaited end of the White Paper. But within days, Ernest Bevin, the Labour Party's new foreign minister, reneged: election promises were only promises; the White Paper was still the law of the land.

“Why?” Raquela asked Arik. He was her mentor in politics, as in medicine.

It was early evening. They were sitting on the wide window ledge in the hospital overlooking the Arab village of Issawiya, which lay just below.

“Why?” he repeated. “Because oil talks louder than promises.”

“Where do we go from here, Arik? Whom do we turn to?” She followed his glance down the mountain.

“The United States,” he said. “It's the new world power. They will decide our fate. Listen to this.” He drew a clipping from the pocket of his white coat. “It's a story about President Truman. He sent his representative, a man called Earl G. Harrison, the dean of the faculty of law of the University of Pennsylvania, to look into the conditions of the DPs (the Displaced Persons) in the camps. Truman was so shocked by his report that he has asked Bevin to let one hundred thousand survivors of the Holocaust be allowed to come here.”

Raquela put her hand on Arik's arm. “Will Bevin do it?”

Arik shrugged. “Who knows?”

OCTOBER 1945

Raquela looked up in the dining room. “Carmi!” she shouted.

“Who's he?” Arik asked, looking at the tall young officer standing in the doorway.

“My friend. He's back from Italy.”

She pushed the chair from the table and ran toward Carmi. She felt Arik's eyes following her.

Carmi enveloped her in his arms. He shut his eyes. “I can't believe it,” he whispered. “You're real. I'm not dreaming this.”

Her body trembled. “Carmi! You didn't write me you were coming home.”

“There was no time. A ship was leaving Italy and they let some of us from the Brigade go aboard.”

She took his hand. “I want you to meet one of the gynecologists I'm working with. You remember I wrote you about Dr. Aron Brzezinski?”

She led him around the dining-room tables. Arik stood up.

“Dr. Brzezinski, may I present Lieutenant Eisenberg?”

The two men shook hands. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant. Will you join us?”

“Am I interrupting something—a medical meeting, or a—?” Carmi's eyes moved from Arik to Raquela.

“Not at all.” Arik was expansive. “We're just having lunch together. It's an honor to have you with us.”

“Carmi, you sit right down here next to Arik.” Raquela moved a chair away from the table. “You two get to know each other while I go get you a tray of food.”

She walked to the crowded cafeteria line, the words
Carmi is back
singing in her ears. The two men who meant most to her in the world were now sitting together. Carmi and Arik. Boyfriend and teacher.

The line moved slowly. She hardly noticed. She was fantasizing the next weeks. They were a threesome, walking along Mount Scopus, prowling the Old City. Carmi, twenty-one, dazzling in uniform, the war hero. Arik, thirty-five, in his white medical coat, wise, philosophical, her
rebbe
. And she, in her blue gown and crisscrossed white apron, walking between them, holding their arms.

She filled Carmi's tray with boiled chicken, chopped eggplant, rye bread, and tea, and smiled secretly as she carried it through the hospital dining room.

At the table, she stopped short. The two men were silent. What was going on? Carmi looked sullen and glum; Arik looked baffled.

She placed the dishes in front of Carmi and sat down.

She tried to start a conversation a few times, and failed.

Always ask people to talk about what they do
, she had read somewhere.
It brings out the best in them
. She tried it.

“Carmi, I wish you would tell Arik some of those things you wrote me about, some of those things you did with the Jewish Brigade in Italy.”

Carmi glared at her. “I'm not in the mood!”

Arik said, “It's all right. I understand.”

Carmi shoveled the food angrily into his mouth. He was obviously trying to control himself. Finally he exploded, “Do you two eat lunch together like this every day? How long has this been going on?”